Are You Sitting Down?

  I stood at the tree unraveling the strings of lights from the branches and letting them fall to the floor. After a few feet of lights and knocking a few ornaments off in the process, I decided this was too time consuming. I was just going to throw the dead lights away anyway. I went to the sewing machine table and retrieved my fabric scissors from the drawer. I returned to the tree and unplugged the lights from the wall just to be sure there was no electricity or just a shortage in the wires. I used my scissors to cut the strings of lights so they could be removed from the tree more easily in smaller pieces.

  Trimming them like hair, I threw the twines of lights behind me and let them fall to the floor with a crackle-like snap. I avoided breaking any more ornaments in the process. Having to touch almost every limb stirred up the layer of fuzzy dust that had settled over the branches during the year. I would have Manny buy new lights to store away for next year. Christmas had almost come and gone again now. It amazed me that some of those strands of lights had lasted all year.

  The tree looked sad in the dark, sadder than it looked when it was only half lit. Maybe the lack of its glow would inspire me to take it completely down this year. I went to the kitchen to get the broom to sweep up the tangles of wire and bulbs. From the darkened doorway, the tree looked like a stranger waiting in the shadows. It would bother me, or startle me, each time I came down the stairs. So, it would have to come down now.

  I ignored the crunching of some of the tiny bulbs beneath my shoes on the hardwood floor as I walked back by the tree to go upstairs. The ornament boxes were kept on the floor in Justin’s old room. Manny had never placed them back in the attic last year after I put the tree up. I’d made an effort to carry all of the boxes back up the stairs and sit them in the hallway. And there they sat half way through December. I pushed them into Justin’s room and closed the door upon the unexpected arrival of a guest or some boring relative. I don’t remember who.

  I had not actually been inside that room at least since last year, although Manny had left the door open from time to time. I had walked past the open doorway and looked in, wondering why the door was left open. I assumed that Manny might have gone into the room for one thing or another since it had become a somewhat temporary storage place and an excuse for not having to crawl into the attic. Maybe some old house ghost liked to leave the door open.

  The cat had died in Justin’s bedroom this year. Apparently, it was a mute cat. I’d never heard it cry or scratch at the door. Not once. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, and neither was Manny. We left the door closed for too long. It pissed on the bed and eventually lay down to sleep forever. Manny discovered it and removed its body in a trash bag. The outline of its stiff body against the black plastic made me nauseous. I had Manny gather the bedspread and sheets and dispose of them too. Since the room was on the second floor and faces the back of the house, we left the windows open for a week to air it out. The mild breezes of spring didn’t help much. It still stank of cat piss.

  I pushed the door open now, letting go of the knob as the door creaked open, like some snooping parent spying on their kid’s doings. The room was cold and musty. The smell of cat urine still lingered just a bit, only adding to the stale scent of mildew. The bare white mattress on the bed reminded me of white sheets draped over the furniture in a house that had been boarded up for the season. I knew it was a bed but it still looked like the shape of something else, perhaps a coffin. I folded my arms to somehow shield me from the cold bitter air now escaping the room. These days, everything reminded me of death.

  Justin’s room was a tiny square space filled now with boxes and crates, all waiting for something useful, or meaningful, to be put in them. The ornament boxes had been moved further into the room, stacked neatly on the floor against the bed. Stacks of magazines we never read lined the walls and hid the top of Justin’s old desk.

  There were some empty shoe boxes I kept to recycle next to two or three thin plastic grocery bags, each stuffed with more grocery bags I always kept. Manny had added some empty milk crates he collected from work, and some packages of model trains.

  He and Justin had built a model train replica of the town when Justin was a kid. It encompassed over half the basement. Manny left it alone for several months after Justin moved away, but he spent more time in the basement now than he did when Justin was here to help him with it.

  The room and its contents were all alike. Even this house was like that, waiting for something meaningful that would never come. I knew what it felt like to be an empty box sitting in a cold room.

  The ornament boxes had perforated handles cut into the sides of them. I lifted two at a time and moved them into the hallway. Under the bright light outside the room, I could make out a thin layer of white dust across the boxes. I pressed a finger down on top of the first box, leaving a perfect fingerprint in the ashy film. I examined my finger, holding it up close to my face, rubbing it against my thumb until the dust I’d collected was gone.

  After moving six boxes into the hall, I carried two of them down the stairs and sat them by the tree. Piece by piece, I began removing glass balls from the limbs first, leaving the hook on each of them as I tucked them between the dividers in the box. After filling the two boxes, I put the lids on and pushed them aside. Most of the other ornaments were heavy ceramic figurines, characters blown from mercury glass, and craft projects Justin had made as a kid. With their gold macaroni pieces, crayon colored popsicles sticks, and red pipe cleaners, they were as faded as the rest of the memories I clung to.

  I climbed the stairs to pick up another box. Removing its lid, I discovered crumpled pieces of yellowed newspaper I had used to wrap the ornaments before storing them away. When I unwrapped them and hung them on the tree last year, I stuffed the wrapping back into the box with intentions of using it again. There were plenty of fresh papers and magazines in this house now. I could throw out all the old paper and wrap the ornaments in yesterday’s news. I emptied the box on the floor next to the pile of Christmas lights. Tinkles of red and silver glitter littered the floor, remnants that had rubbed off some of the ornaments from the last time they were in the box. A flat folded corner of one of the papers caught my eye.

  Bending to pick it up, I smoothed out some of the creases with my hands. The paper was so old some of the ink transferred to my hands, blackening them. I immediately noticed the date. The paper was from two days after Justin had died. I laid the paper on the coffee table and picked up more pieces of it from the floor. Unraveling the wadded paper and smoothing the pages out on the glass top of the table, I felt like some television detective slowly recovering some sort of evidence, or an archeologist digging up clues to our past.

  Some of the pages were missing, probably in another box or thrown away because I had not used them. The headlines were words I don’t remember reading. When a mother loses her only son, the rest of the news in the world is easily forgotten, if heard at all. The rectangular pieces of the newspaper were still quite wrinkled but intact, and I stacked them neatly on the table giving the gazette back its shape. I found one page that had a neat long rectangular piece missing from where someone had cut out an article. It was a full page ad for a car lot. I immediately turned it over to find the obituary page. I didn’t remember cutting out the article on Justin, but I must have. I did remember where it was though, tucked between the pages of the Bible in my nightstand drawer. I walked upstairs to my bedroom to get it.

  I don’t know how much time had passed between trying to take down the tree and sitting on the bed to read Justin’s obituary again. Hearing Manny come in the front door brought me back. I looked at the tissue in my hand, soaked in tears and stained black from the newspaper ink on my hands.

  “Helen?” he called from downstairs.

  “I’m up here.”

  “Why are you taking down the tree?”

  I wanted to tell him that sooner or later we all had to move on with our lives, but I’d already grown tired of him telling me
that.

  “All the lights burned out,” I yelled down the stairs.

  I heard him grumbling about the mess on the floor. I could hear him picking up the strands of lights and stuffing them into a trash bag. Like the cat and the bedspread, he cleaned up the problems and took them to the curb. I checked my face in the mirror to find a smudge of black ink on my cheek from touching my face. A clean line ran through it from where a tear had fallen.

  “Guess who I ran into at Greer’s?” he said as I was coming down the stairs.

  He was always running into someone there, or at the bank, in line at the post office, or in the parking lot at work. It was always someone from church, back when I went, or an old neighbor I’d done a favor for once. It was never anyone I’d thought of since. I never remembered them. Manny often had to go through neighbor genealogy to get me to remember.

  “Sheila. You remember Sheila. She’s Mr. Barnhill’s granddaughter. Her parent’s lived in the old Parker house before she was born. Mr. Barnhill passed away about a year ago. The Barnhill’s moved to town, but they would bring her out here to go to church sometimes with her grandparents. She went to high school with Justin.”

  Half the time, I still never remembered. Later, I’d fade into a daydream with their name on my mind. Bake sales, pageant plays, piano recitals, trips to the grocery store all flooded my mind like I was thumbing through a directory in my brain. Faces flashed from church pews, department store aisles, or community barbecues. Eventually, I sometimes found the one Manny had run into that day just as they were back then. I never knew how long ago it had been since I saw them last. Every event was placed in time either before Justin’s death or after, and I had not seen too many people outside this house after it.

  “Who?” I asked him as I stood there and watched him picking up the mess I had made.

  He always waited for me to respond, a sign that he knew he had my attention. He stood up from kneeling on the floor. His sweater had risen up a bit to reveal a roll of pink flesh. With the movement of my eyes, he saw that I had noticed so he pulled the sweater down. He huffed out a large breath before speaking again. Getting up from the floor took a lot out of him.

  “Who did you see?” I asked again to speed things along. He was accustomed to my impatience.

  “Travis White,” he said through another exhale.

  Now, that was a name in need of no explanation. He popped into my head immediately. I knew exactly who he was, although I had often wished I didn’t. It was hard to think of my son without thinking of Travis, but I eventually learned to dream of a Justin prior to him meeting Travis. It kept Travis from creeping in to the memories. He wasn’t there back then. He didn’t know the Justin I knew. Yet.

  I wanted to walk away and leave Manny standing there. I clinched my fists closed and then opened them again. The imprint of my nails in the flesh of my palms stung. Manny looked at me like a happy puppy that had just pissed on the newspaper. He was waiting to see a smile grow on my face, but it just would not sprout. Instead of waiting for my reply, he continued.

  “He’s in town to see his family for Christmas. All of his brothers and sisters are staying at his Mom’s house for the holiday. You remember Lorraine, don’t you? Nice lady. She hasn’t aged a bit. I see her at church all the time. She always says hello and asks about you.”

  I didn’t believe him, the part about Lorraine asking about me anyway. I doubt anyone ever asked about me as much as he said they did. It was a lot like when a couple gets a divorce late into their marriage, if Manny and I were to divorce now after forty-two years. The neighborly thing to do is to ask how one of us is doing, but no one wants to ask because they fear they will embarrass you. They think it might be rude to ask. No one wants to know your business when you might need a shoulder to cry on.

  Since we weren’t divorced, maybe Manny wasn’t lying. I’m sure at one time or another, right after Justin’s death, everyone did ask about me. Manny had rehearsed his answer and recited it by heart many times by now.

  “She’s fine. Thanks for asking,” is probably about all he knew how to say.

  Fine is a routine word which really means, “I don’t want to talk about it.” It’s used to politely dismiss the subject. So, eventually, they just stop asking.

  I never cared much for Travis. Even before Justin’s death, I blamed Travis for what my son said he was. I blamed him for taking Justin away from me and off to that stinking city to live in sin. The thought of two men together still sent my stomach on edge, but it’s a different sickening when your son comes home and tells you that’s what he likes. I forbid him to tell anyone else. I wanted to put soap in his mouth and erase it like a cuss word slipping out of him when he was eight years old. I wanted to bend him over my knee and wear his ass out with a belt. I cursed the heavens every night.

  Why me, Lord?

  After he told us, it was as if I didn’t know who he was. Everything we thought we were doing to raise our child right was a lie. Were we not praying hard enough in church? We were there every time the doors were open. I wanted to blame Manny. He was a eunuch when it came to being a father. He wasn’t here enough. He didn’t spend enough time with Justin. He didn’t pass along the manly traits and actions a son should inherit instinctively from his father, if Manny had them to pass down at all.

  Or was this my sin, my punishment, for having married Manny? Justin was my only child, a blessing I was humble to receive. But maybe I smothered him. Maybe I babied him too much. I forced him to take piano lessons. I made him sing in the choir. I never encouraged him to play with other boys when he was small. Maybe they picked on him or picked him last for games, if they picked him at all. Maybe Justin preferred to play with the girls. He did like stuffed animals when he was a young child, instead of trucks and dirt. Did that make him gay?

  I wasn’t there to watch my little boy grow up every second, or was I there too much? Maybe Manny and I are both to blame for what our son became. Was it our fault he didn’t ask a girl to prom? He didn’t even go to prom. Did he search his health class textbook for answers about sex because he had no one else to turn to? Did they even write about that sort of thing in textbooks? I don’t know, and I obviously didn’t know enough about my son, or about what he was, to answer his questions or even my own.

  “It’s not what I am, Mother, it’s who I am,” he kept telling me.

  And I wouldn’t listen.

  I didn’t know who I was anymore, or who I was when Justin was living. I was a stranger on the sidewalk who I avoid eye contact with every time I look at them, everytime I look at myself in the mirror. When I turned away, the face was forgotten. I might turn back for a second look, thinking I knew that person from somewhere. But it’s too late. They’re already gone.

  That’s probably why I resented Travis so much. He too was a stranger to me, until he came into Justin’s life. I’d known Justin much longer than Travis, but already it was as if he knew my son better than me. At last, someone just like him had reached out to my Justin. The missing piece in his puzzle of life was complete. He knew love, and the touch of someone I only dreamt about when I was a school girl.

  Maybe I resented Justin too, or was jealous, because he had someone to love and who loved him back. And it’s not out of convenience or because we can’t imagine doing anything different with ourselves. Too much time had passed for Manny or me to know a different life. How dare I think I could drag Justin down with us? There was no time to learn anything outside my indifference; no matter how many times Justin tried to get us to be more open to such things. In a flash, the cancer took him. I don’t know who was to blame for that either. But when your only child is gone it’s then that you realize the time you wasted. I knew I couldn’t change that, but I couldn’t stop beating myself up over it either.

  “Do you want me to take those boxes upstairs?” Manny asked.

  He’d finished sweeping up the lights and picking up the paper. He thumbed through the sheets of news on the coffee table
with a look as if he thought they were today’s paper.

  “If you don’t mind, and bring down a few more of the empty boxes from the hall,” I said.

  When he was done, he sat down on the sofa and turned on the television. I wandered aimlessly between the stairs and the poor Christmas tree, as if waiting for someone to knock on the door. Manny had mentioned that Travis might stop by, so maybe it was him I was waiting for. I doubted he came, but a part of me secretly wished he would. Something inside felt that if Travis came over, our house would be alive with Justin again. I knew it wouldn’t bring Justin back, but being the last person to have seen Justin alive, I felt Travis was somehow magical.

  I wandered into the basement and pulled the chain to turn on the overhead light. The concrete room was cold, but not damp. I approached Manny’s train miniature of the entire town of Ruby Dregs which was built atop four large ping pong tables pushed together. It was an elaborate replica of every building and house in Dogwood, even the cemetery where Justin was buried looked almost identical to the real thing. With all the lights and trains turned off, the town was eerily still and seemed deserted except for the miniature people frozen and faceless.

  The miniature of our own house seemed much cleaner. The aluminum siding was not dirty; the yard was neatly cut. The tree in the front yard, the one lightning had hit this year, was alive and vibrant instead of half dead and clinging to its last living branches. Lorraine White’s house was the same, except that is how her real house looked in real life. It was lively and bright, nestled in its grove of countryside and between rows of fruit trees. I had never been inside, but I had driven by it many times.

  I leaned down to look into the windows like some giant. With my thumb and forefinger, I grasped the sides of the roof and pulled. With a quick snap, the gum paste holding the house onto the Styrofoam land gave way. Holding the small house in the palm of my hand, I admired it for a few seconds before dropping it onto the floor to step on it. It shattered beneath my shoe like a crunchy cockroach. Satisfied with its demise, I lifted my shoe and pushed the remains under the table with my toe.